Meeting 22/07/08 @ Anja’s studio

Meeting at Anja’s studio from 15.30 – 20.15 Present: Anja, Barbara, Danielle.

We met up to discuss the design of the sensor on which Barbara had been working. She’d made a few prototypes with black felt which are very promising. They should be worn around the tip of the finger and can incorporate the parts for sensing as well as for displaying. It seems to be pretty light tight. Barbara is going to investigate further how to connect the ‘ring’ to the shirt. Options are a sort of glove and different types of wire. We’ll look at that next time. Danielle is going to test the prototype and try to integrate the test setup with this prototype. She’ll also be able to test the code more thoroughly. Anja is going to look at working with the RGB LED.

We also exchanged new things we discovered (RFID – link on the right, anti-breast cancer t-shirt etc.) And perhaps we’ll all be joining the wearables workgroup in Den Bosch. Danielle has already signed up for this.

The next meeting is planned for Monday August 18th at 14h in Breda. Besides e-pressing we’ll be doing an introduction in Zen meditation at Danielle’s place and at her zen group later that evening!

ps. Barbara will be very sorry she missed the delicious risotto 😛

Meeting at Barbara’s

26-06-2008 from 11-15.30 @ Barbara’s, present: Anja, Barbara, Danielle (from 11:45)

We had a great time testing the new heart-rate sensorand combining our results into a graph. Our heart-rates varied from 61 to 84 (we had the Suunto watch as a back-up) but although the graphs looked very different when we counted the dents the values seemed the same. So in the train I started to program a little program to count the differences in the values. This is what it looks like:

// process_data.pde look for differences between numbers
int counter = 0;          // count the differences
int old_val = 0;          // stores previous value in csv file
int current_val;          // stores current value in csv file
int dif = 1;              // difference between 2 readings, change the number to look for bigger difference between numbers
//
// read csv file
String lines[] = loadStrings("output_org.csv"); // change the name of the file to read from
//println("there are " + lines.length + " lines");
for (int i=1; i < lines.length-1; i++) {
  //println(lines[i]);
  current_val = int(lines[i]);
  // look for difference
  print("dif= ");
  print(current_val - old_val);
  print(", ");
  if (abs(current_val - old_val) >= dif){
    print("counted dif= ");
    println(abs(current_val - old_val));
    counter++;
  }
  // make current value the old_value
  old_val = current_val;
}
println("bpm: ");
print(counter);

What I discovered is that you look for a difference of 1 the count is too high and when you look for a difference of 2 or more the count is too low. When you add these two counts together you and divide them by 2, 2 out of 4 times you get the right value!?
I now want to change the program so that the size of the difference is taken into account.

Here you can download the xls files with our data and here you can download the program above with text files which you can import.

The next step will be to

  • Improve the counter program
  • Make a design/prototype for the sensor
  • Change the potmeter to a resistor

Our next meeting will be either the 24th of July or the second half of August.

Building a heart-rate sensor with Richard

Date: 20-06-08, present: Danielle & Richard van Bemmelen

I asked my friend Richard to look at the instability of our current heart rate sensor. Richard is a programmer and engineer so exactly the right man for the job 🙂 It was kind of hard to analyze the current device as everything was soldered together. But Richard discovered that there was a flaw in the design with caused the device generating random measurements.

We had to totally reconstruct the sensor. Using an extra potmeter to stabilize the measurements. This will later be substituted by a resistor. We also used a new light sensor which has a range of 2 – 20 k.

For testing we used a make shift setting with an LED connected to the laptop USB port 🙂 We did three tests: no exertion, heavy exertion and a blank test to look for deviations. The latter appeared to be almost none existing. For this test we wrote a processing script which captures the data from the arduino and writes the results to a csv file (text file). With Excel we can easily visualize this data in a line.

If I find out how I’ll post the Scheme heart-rate sensor and processing pde code .

Meeting June 6 2008 in Breda

Report of the meeting at Danielle’s place in Breda from 11 to 15 hours, 06/06/08. Present: Anja, Barbara and Danielle.

Ideally we want to do the sensing inside the material and not with separate sensors. There is sensitive foam which responds to stretching and pressing. It is used to measure breathing, shoulder movement and shoulder blade pressure. We want to look into that. Anja knows where to buy this stuff.

We’ve decided on a framework for our first prototype. As the heart-rate sensor we’re working on is low tech and low cost we want to start with that. We want to display three states: low heart-rate, medium and high heart-rate. Using RGB LED’s we want to display these three states and alert the wearer and others what state you’re in. The RGB LED’s can change colour subtly. Low heart-rate is displayed in orange (stimulating), medium heart-rate in a neutral colour and perhaps a bigger area. Fast heart-rate is displayed in blue (calming) and placed in a discreet area.

For the wiring we want to use a laser cut-out from conductive fabric. This is less vulnerable then thread and looks a lot cooler 😉 We can even use it on the outside of the shirt to underline the idea of transparency. We can do this fabric laser cutting at the textile museum in Tilburg.

The shirt is a sort of see-through shirt in the sense that it’s shows the hidden side of the wearer. In accordance with that we’re looking for a new name for our shirt. The name should suggest transparency or something like jelly fish, see-through, sense-through…

We looked at the heart-rate sensor Danielle made with Mathe. It’s a good starting point but it needs improving:

  • The measurements must become stable. Where you’re not wearing it the values should be the same and not vary by itself. We want to look at different LED’s and light sensors.
  • The pressure on the finger should not vary to make the measurements more stable. Barbara is going to look at a the design for that trying out different materials and constructions.
  • The program must be fine tuned to make the results less rough. We can work on that once the input is more stable.

Anja is going to work on the output, Danielle is going to investigate the light sensors and LED’s on sensitivity and sizes, she’ll also look at RGB LED’s. Barbara is going to work on the sensor taking into account the points mentioned above.

Our next meeting will be in week 26.

Heating

I’ve done a little research into heating elements. As stated in the book ‘Pysical computing’ the firm Minco has a wide range of heat sensors and elements. Interesting are the flexible sensors and elements. Both come in very small sizes. The sensors can measure very small temperature differences, I’ll seen numbers like 0,04C.
Here’s an example: Polyimide (Kapton®) Thermofoilâ„¢ Heaters
Polyimide Thermofoil flexible heaters, or Kapton heaters, are ideal for applications with space and weight limitations, or where the heater will be exposed to vacuum, oil, or chemicals. These thin, flexible heaters are rugged, accurate and reliable.

In the Netherlands the firm Alflex deals in these products. I couldn’t find any reference to the wearability of these products. Neither can I find any information on prices.

Meeting 04/04/08 @ Anjas’ studio

Meeting at Anja’s studio. 04-04-08 from 11 to 15.30. Present: Anja, Barbara (till 14.30), Danielle.

Barbara has done research into the chakra’s but found the possibilities limited (one line) and the appearance too esoteric. So we’ll have to choose the area’s we want to work with ourselves. We may use some of the underlying theory and the colours might be useful too.

Barbara also did research on heat sensitive paints:
+ They react quickly to warmth (fast feedback)
+ You can mix colours and are thus able to make all the colours you want
– No matter what colour, on reaction to heat it always turns white.
We could experiment with using different colours of shirts so we have three colours to work with: the paint colour, white and the colour of the shirt.
It might be interesting to look into compact heating and cooling (Peltier junctions, restrictive coil – we’re not sure what that means yet) elements to have more control on the saturation of the colours. Biofeedback could drive these elements.
Luminex is cool stuff the drawback is that it’s only visible in the night.

We want to research the possibilities of using a map or grid to make a kind of guide that can let people know where to touch or press when having certain emotions or ailments. This should be a playful design.

As far as output/display we came up with the following list: LED, LED wire, Luminex (conductive fyber), heat sensitive paint, e-paper, light emitting wallpaper. We want to see if we can meet the producer of the Iliat based in Eindhoven. (View ‘In de ban het ding’ link).

We want to investigate three sort of prototypes:
1) A shirt with heat sensing paints for the area’s to interact with. Each of us is going to formulate some thoughts on this and make a design. The next meeting will produce these shirts an wear them once they’re finished to see what the reactions are.
2) A shirt with a map/guide and one sensor or a couple of switches which uses LED’s as output.
3) A shirt with a map/guide and one sensor or a couple of switches which uses Luminex as output. There is an Italian company (view link) that sells towels in different colours which we’re going to buy and use in our prototype.

With regard to the sensors we think we’ll get the most useful data when we combine a heart-rate sensor with a body motion sensor. This way we can rule out false data because increasing heart-rate combined with body motion would mean activity and not stress.
We want to look into energy point sensors which are used in traditional Chinese medicin.
We’re worried about the integration of the sensors with the wearable. We don’t won’t the technique to be separated from the garment. Nor do we want to be too much of a hassle to put on. A nice looking ear clip or ring in line with the design for measuring heart-rate would be a solution. If we want to use a breast belt 😉 we could use a bra or top integrated into the garment. For men we would have to think of another solution…

We replied to Frank Kooi’s e-mail asking some new questions.
Barbare is going to London on an internship with loop.ph who do lot’s of interesting things with light, she’ll keep us updated.
Anja and Danielle might be partaking in the Mediamatic e-Fashion day with Leah Buechley providing that we can work on our project and discuss it with her.

The next meeting is 12-05-08 in Breda at Danielle’s place

Meeting 12/03/08 @ Anja’s studio

Our first meeting after the workshop. From 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Present were Anja, Barbara and Danielle.

We started off by rethinking the project:

  • Is it necessary for our project to work with pressure points? Working with them is very precise work that has to be done by a human to be effective.
  • Maybe it’s more useful for us to work with area’s instead of points? They can be visualized by heat sensitive ink.
  • The element of communication and touch is crucial for the wearable, it should stimulate (bodily) contact between the wearer of the garment and others
  • Practices like Reiki and Shiatsu prove the power of touch
  • We could consider tension treatment on a specific area of the body. For example neck tension could be relieved by placing a warm hand on the tense area. We could also use vibrators to relax tense muscles.
  • Is there a way to express a surplus of good feelings (like: I feel energetic, full of love or peace)?

We also thought about how to communicate our project, what language to use. Do we mention the type of ‘New Age’ things that inspire us? We decided that the most important thing to communicate is that the wearable is an added means of communication for the wearer. It can express inner states that may be hard to talk about. It also makes it more easy for people to communicate in a direct and free way. These are things that a lot of people long for. For those interested we can elaborate on the ‘softer’ and medical side of the project. So we can have levels of communication about the project.

Our goal is to make an attractive wearable that will appeal to a large audience and still express the more vulnerable side of people and help them with emotions, awareness and communication.

These are the main elements of the wearable:

  1. Interaction on area’s using touch
  2. Communicate moods/inner states
  3. Make use of meridians, chakra’s, pressure points
  4. Levels of states: body > emotions > spirituality

Way of measuring inner states:

  1. Switches: choose mood from a given set
  2. Sensors: GRS, heart-rate, muscle tension, breath-rate, skin temperature, blood-pressure

Ways of expressing inner states:

  1. Changing ink (area)
  2. LED light (spots)
  3. LED wire (area)
  4. Luminex (area)

We wrote a letter to Frank Kooi asking him for advice and a meeting.

We decided to start this blog to measure progress and to exchange and centralize idea’s.

We continue our research on the output (materials) and input (sensors).

The next meeting is planned on 02/04/08 @ 11 a.m. @ Anja’s studio.